I was looking through some old papers from high school, and I realized that there are some damn good quotes from the classics . . . not to mention some damn underappreciated quotes from the not-so-classics.

What are your favorites quotes from books you've read, and why the hell did they rub you the right way?

oh yeah, and you should probably include spoiler warnings if the quotes kill the plot . . .

I'll start off with a quote from a book I didn't even like all that much, though this has practically become a mantra of mine over the past couple of years:

Life of Pi wrote:scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess, and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science

touche

Another favorite is from a Sartre short story that I highly recommend reading if you haven't (won't take more than a half hour out of your day ), though I'll attach a spoiler warning to the quote:

The Wall wrote:Several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

Well these are just the three I have at hand (the books are just two feet away from this desk), so here you go:

This is from The Great Shark Hunt.

Hunter Stockton Thompson wrote: I returned to the Holiday Inn â€” where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms â€” to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from.

I'm not sure if I agree with this 100%, but I like the way Buk cuts through the crepe. Mmm pancakes.

This is from Ordinary Tales.

Charles Bukowski wrote:the pest is always full of dry standard nonsense that he mistakes for self-wisdom, some of his favourite remarks are:

"there is no such thing as ALL bad. you say that all cops are bad. well they're not. I've met some good ones. there is such a thing as a good cop."

you never get a chance to explain to him that when a man puts that uniform on that he is the paid protector of things of the present time. he is here to see that things stay the way they are. if you like the way things are, then all cops are good cops. there is such a thing as ALL bad, but the pest is soaked in these addled and homespun philosophies and he will not let them go.

Oscar Wilde wrote:Youth is wasted on the young

Last edited by Seppuku on Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.

ok, I'm supposed to be taking an online course right now, so of course I need to procrastinate . . . found another one that I absolutely love from A Farewell to Arms (I'm a damn sucker for Hemingway) . . . I don't know why, but it seems to epitomize what I dislike about a number of "classic" authors (though I still love "overly descriptive" types like Tolkein, so I guess I'm a hypocrite?)

Ernest Hemingway wrote:He was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

Anyhow, I have a scrap book that I turn to now and again, where I might sketch, or write things down, or often cut and paste images, colours, newspaper clippings or maybe random asbtract things from magazines. Humorous, poignant, ridiculous, moving, beautifull, sad. Whatever it is that would compell me in that moment to want to save it in some way.

It's been a little neglected for a while now, for it inescapably has it's roots in naive, introspecive, yet good hearted teenage emo-ness, but it was sort of born of frustration as well, from me wanting to capture some of those more transiant experiences that can pass us by, whether it's turning a page on a striking photogaph, reading a profound article, feeling connected to something or someone new, an author, someone's life you've read about or witnessed from the distance of history... and not wanting to just turn the next page as if nothing has happened. Recording that somehow, those new memories, thoughts and images you breathe in modern daily life, that just get sucked up and blended into who you are, and trying to somehow not loose, all those little moments of experience that can trickle away as if they had never happened as you carry on with carryin' on.

And due to the nature of it, the mixing of my thoughts and ideas, those of others, or of just color and shape and memory, in the end, hopefully becoming something of worth in and of itself.

Anyway, these are several years old in some cases, so it's representive of what I was reading at the time and they're not my all time favourite quotes per se, but I have the book the thing sitting here next to me, so here's what I have written on the inside cover...

EDIT: (complete with casual comments to compensate for teenage MAN, I NEED TO LAID - ness)

"In as much as everyman takes the suffering that falls to his share as teh greatest."

Herman Hesse - Steppenwolf

Early 20th century German intellectuals, they weren't all Nazi sympathziers?

Go figure.

" ... or to melt down the hours in pleasing thought."

Hazlitt's Table Talk: Chapter: One Living to One's Self

Common sense courtesy of the 19th century this time. Old Billy boy loved to tell a tale or two. And to be fair, he had a lot to say. A snob occasionaly, an unfair cynic quite possibly, but an original, compassionate, free thinking man of the world nonetheless. When travelling the globe on your wits and the romantic colonial pride in your swollen, puffed out chest, was the folly of indulgant, lion hearted Englishmen everywhere.

"The Governor:

1) Never make personal remarks.

2) Never tell a hostess you enjoyed yourself.

3) Don't force anything mechanical.

4) Never kick anything inanimate.

5) Don't fart around with the enivitable."

Joseph Heller - Good As Gold

I <3 Jospeh Heller

When in doubt, when thinking too much gives you nose bleeds and you start intellectualising the patterns of griddle moosh on your morning waffles, always revert to teh funny. It's often the only thing that makes sense anyway. During my teens, as far as books go, Heller and Adams were often the much needed gravitaional pull beneath my "why me?" wings.

(As for quotes by the way, if you can get your hands on it, it doesn't get much better than Adams' The Meaning Of Liff.)

Oh and considering Kirk's new motivation to be a free-wheeling child of the summer sunshine, number 5 made just made me smile all the more.

Last edited by Flumm on Tue Jun 13, 2006 1:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

A little cheating here as my favourite book quote actually comes from a foreword written by August Strindberg to his play called (as it happens) A Dream Play:

Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist; on an insignificant basis of reality the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations.

It's just such a beautiful quote to me - it seems to capture the whole complexity and wonderment of Life and the Universe itself. Ingmar Bergman quoted it towards the end of Fanny & Alexander which was when I first became aware of it.

Not as quoteable as the stuff above but it's the first thing that srung into my mimnd when I read this thread.

From R. L. Stevensons Treasure Island:

`Nobody in this here island ever heard of Darby,' he [Silver] muttered; `not one but us that's here.' And then, making a great effort, `Shipmates,' he cried, `I'm here to get that stuff, and I'll not be beat by man nor devil. I never was feared of Flint in his life, and, by the powers, I'll face him dead. There's seven hundred thousand pound not a quarter of a mile from here. When did ever a gentleman o' fortune show his stern to that much dollars, for a boosy old seaman with a blue mug - and him dead, too?'

Iconoclastica wrote:

The Wall wrote:Several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

I don't get it. Without knowing the context I would say the exact opposite is true.

I'm pimping Iain Banks at every oppurtunity, this is from A Song Of Stone :

"Is this yet winter? I do not know. There is some techiical definition, something based on calendars and the position of the sun, but I think one simply becomes aware that the tide of the season has irrevocably turned; that the animal in us smells winter. Disregarding the imposed grid of our chronology, winter is something inflicted upon our half world, something taken away from the land by the cold and cooling sky and the low and lowering sun, something that permeates the soul, and enters the mind through the nose, between the teeth and acros the porous barrier of the skin"

AND THIS TOO:

"The hand's grasp near fits the skull, the covering bone by bone enclosed. And saying this, we grasp that.

We each contain the universe inside our selves, the totality of existence encompassed by all that we have to make sense of it; a grey, ridged mushroom mass ladled into a bony bowl the size of a mallish cooking pot. In my more solipsistic moments, I have conjectured that we do not simply experience everything within that squashed sphere, but create it there too. Perhaps we think up our own destinies, and so in a sense deserve whatever happens to us, for not having had the wit to imagine something better."

Cool thread Iconny.

Elitism is positing that your taste is equivalent to quality, you hate "Hamlet" does it make it "bad"? If you think so, you're one elite motherfucker.

James Joyce, "You have asked me what I will do and what I will not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use: silence, exile and cunning. "

Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, wrote:Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, wrote:Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

phenominal book, man . . . good pick

and Adam - ever read/see Copenhagen by Michael Frayn? It's a play about the interaction between Bohr and Heisenberg in developing the Uncertainty Principle, and runs parallel to key events of World War II and the Manhattan Project . . . I highly recommend it if you're interested in a quick read.

The Wall wrote:Several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

I don't get it. Without knowing the context I would say the exact opposite is true.

That's why I said SPOILERS . . . the meaning behind this is entirely dependent on the context, and even then, it would be very understandable for someone to disagree with it . . . it's a philosophical perspective tied into extreme circumstances, which I just find damn interesting upon execution.

The Wall wrote:Several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

I d on't get it. Without knowing the context I would say the exact opposite is true.

That's why I said SPOILERS . . . the meaning behind this is entirely dependent on the context, and even then, it would be very understandable for someone to disagree with it . . . it's a philosophical perspective tied into extreme circumstances, which I just find damn interesting upon execution.

Never read the book, but at a guess, is it perhaps because death is coming whether now or in a hundred years whereas before, being eternal, death was nothing. Sort of like the difference between googol, one and infinity?

Elitism is positing that your taste is equivalent to quality, you hate "Hamlet" does it make it "bad"? If you think so, you're one elite motherfucker.

The Wall wrote:Several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

I d on't get it. Without knowing the context I would say the exact opposite is true.

That's why I said SPOILERS . . . the meaning behind this is entirely dependent on the context, and even then, it would be very understandable for someone to disagree with it . . . it's a philosophical perspective tied into extreme circumstances, which I just find damn interesting upon execution.

Never read the book, but at a guess, is it perhaps because death is coming whether now or in a hundred years whereas before, being eternal, death was nothing. Sort of like the difference between googol, one and infinity?

SPOILERS

yeah, you hit the nail on the head thematically . . . but the main idea is that everyone thinks they're immortal, at least on some level, until they're actually faced head on with the undeniable fact that they are going to die

Ah I see. Although I disagree, I think people are sometimes painfully aware of their mortality, when a kid first finds out about death for example. And that we have the idea or our own end constatnly at the back of our minds.

I'll have to read a copy. I've just started on The Plague again, but I'll seek this out.

Elitism is positing that your taste is equivalent to quality, you hate "Hamlet" does it make it "bad"? If you think so, you're one elite motherfucker.

No, I agree that we all see impending death in some light . . . but it's only in certain situations (which vary for everyone) that that awareness becomes all-encompassing . . . you'll see . . . The Plague is very good too (though I really miss that feeling of first reading The Stranger back in high school :-p), but I'm short story girl . . . it's what I do

Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, wrote:Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

phenominal book, man . . . good pick

and Adam - ever read/see Copenhagen by Michael Frayn? It's a play about the interaction between Bohr and Heisenberg in developing the Uncertainty Principle, and runs parallel to key events of World War II and the Manhattan Project . . . I highly recommend it if you're interested in a quick read.

Yeah, I read it a while back. Another cool adaptation of it was in Jim Ottaviani's Two-Fisted Science. But what I liked about Frayn's telling was that by the end, you really didn't know the answer to the central question 'Why did I come to Copenhagen?' It used the uncertainty principle as a metaphor for the uncertainty of our own memories. "Is that really how things happened?" You never know for sure..

Q.E.D did something similar where Feynman's sum over histories approach to quantum electrodynamics is used as a metaphor for this guy's life. He's too larger-than-life to be examined in a simple two act play. If people didn't know he existed, they'd swear he was made up. He's like the elephant in that parable, with people reaching out to it in the dark. One grabs his trunk and says 'It's a hose!' and one grabs his ear and says 'It's a palm tree!'. With Feynman, there were so many aspects to him that you could write about; the womanizer, the prankster, the atomic bomb builder, the inventor of both quantum computing and nanotechnology, the challenger disaster investigator...you can go on. Feynman was all these things, all these histories at once.

I guess the stage has been far more successful in its treatment of scientists than the screen...

In terms of Copenhagen, I completely agree!! I love how well it parallels the uncertainty principle! You can only ever know the velocity OR the location of an electron within an atom, never both at the same time . . . and exactly as you said, with memories, you often only know the time when it happened, but can't pinpoint the exact situation; or you might even remember exactly what occured, but be unable to place it precisely in its context, especially if you take into account such variables as intentions. I remember writing a final paper on that for a philosophy class and comparing it to some of the other theories of quantum mechanics as well as to Schrodinger's cat . . . good times.

Thanks for the heads up on QED - I'll definitely be reading that as soon as I get a chance

EDIT: and good point about success in plays vs. film . . . I wonder if it has anything to do with the prospective audience . . . or is it just the toxicity of money-grubbing studio paws getting involved that fucks up stories like that en route to the screen?

Iconoclastica wrote:In terms of Copenhagen, I completely agree!! I love how well it parallels the uncertainty principle! You can only ever know the velocity OR the location of an electron within an atom, never both at the same time . . . and exactly as you said, with memories, you often only know the time when it happened, but can't pinpoint the exact situation; or you might even remember exactly what occured, but be unable to place it precisely in its context, especially if you take into account such variables as intentions. I remember writing a final paper on that for a philosophy class and comparing it to some of the other theories of quantum mechanics as well as to Schrodinger's cat . . . good times.

Oh, now you gotta show us. You still have that paper? Don't be a mindtease...

But yeah, I'm with you on that one. Ultimately I'd even go so far as to say that epistemology really is at the heart of all mathematics, logic, philosophy and science. It's all about what you can know and what you can't.

Nicholas of Cusa used pi as a metaphor for the unknowable. Just as the sides of a polygon increase ever toward touching the circle, it never will. And so may be how our intellects relate to truth. Like in platonism, which Godel was trying to prove with his famous theorem. He wasn't trying to show that there isn't any truth out there, but just we may not be able to understand or describe it.

He proved that you can't prove everything.

Thanks for the heads up on QED - I'll definitely be reading that as soon as I get a chance

EDIT: and good point about success in plays vs. film . . . I wonder if it has anything to do with the prospective audience . . . or is it just the toxicity of money-grubbing studio paws getting involved that fucks up stories like that en route to the screen?

You know, I wonder if it might be just a different culture. Cinema was pretty much commercial from the get-go, right? I mean you'd make a film to sell it in the little nickelodeons and so forth. The Hollywood movie industry was founded in a money-making scheme to avoid paying Thomas Edison royalties on his inventions. But drama, going back to the Greeks, was always a 'public' art. It's purpose was to educate, enlighten, and entertain the people. The first plays were designed to try to convey certain truths about the universe to the masses, mostly through telling stories of mythology and metaphysics. (Although most of the metaphysical plays took the form of satire, ala Aristophanes.) So even today you see that difference in mindset. I mean, yeah you had the whole realism movement come in with Ibsen/Beckett/Chekhov/Arthur Miller, which was less about that kind of stuff and more like what independent films are today. But overall there's a freaking huge difference in mindset, almost at a C.P. Snow/two cultures kind of level.

Case-in-point, I'm reading about Luca Ronconi and physicist John Barrow's play Infinities right now.

Shit, could you imagine there ever being a movie like this? Hollywood would never touch it, but even the independent filmmakers (who should be more about telling noncommercial stories) are more interested in slice-of-life, social or personal stories than stories about the big metaphysical questions, which you'd think art is supposed to tackle. I really think most independent cinema has crippled itself with realism.

Iconoclastica wrote:In terms of Copenhagen, I completely agree!! I love how well it parallels the uncertainty principle! You can only ever know the velocity OR the location of an electron within an atom, never both at the same time . . . and exactly as you said, with memories, you often only know the time when it happened, but can't pinpoint the exact situation; or you might even remember exactly what occured, but be unable to place it precisely in its context, especially if you take into account such variables as intentions. I remember writing a final paper on that for a philosophy class and comparing it to some of the other theories of quantum mechanics as well as to Schrodinger's cat . . . good times.

Oh, now you gotta show us. You still have that paper? Don't be a mindtease...

But yeah, I'm with you on that one. Ultimately I'd even go so far as to say that epistemology really is at the heart of all mathematics, logic, philosophy and science. It's all about what you can know and what you can't.

Nicholas of Cusa used pi as a metaphor for the unknowable. Just as the sides of a polygon increase ever toward touching the circle, it never will. And so may be how our intellects relate to truth. Like in platonism, which Godel was trying to prove with his famous theorem. He wasn't trying to show that there isn't any truth out there, but just we may not be able to understand or describe it.

He proved that you can't prove everything.

Thanks for the heads up on QED - I'll definitely be reading that as soon as I get a chance

EDIT: and good point about success in plays vs. film . . . I wonder if it has anything to do with the prospective audience . . . or is it just the toxicity of money-grubbing studio paws getting involved that fucks up stories like that en route to the screen?

You know, I wonder if it might be just a different culture. Cinema was pretty much commercial from the get-go, right? I mean you'd make a film to sell it in the little nickelodeons and so forth. The Hollywood movie industry was founded in a money-making scheme to avoid paying Thomas Edison royalties on his inventions. But drama, going back to the Greeks, was always a 'public' art. It's purpose was to educate, enlighten, and entertain the people. The first plays were designed to try to convey certain truths about the universe to the masses, mostly through telling stories of mythology and metaphysics. (Although most of the metaphysical plays took the form of satire, ala Aristophanes.) So even today you see that difference in mindset. I mean, yeah you had the whole realism movement come in with Ibsen/Beckett/Chekhov/Arthur Miller, which was less about that kind of stuff and more like what independent films are today. But overall there's a freaking huge difference in mindset, almost at a C.P. Snow/two cultures kind of level.

Case-in-point, I'm reading about Luca Ronconi and physicist John Barrow's play Infinities right now.

Shit, could you imagine there ever being a movie like this? Hollywood would never touch it, but even the independent filmmakers (who should be more about telling noncommercial stories) are more interested in slice-of-life, social or personal stories than stories about the big metaphysical questions, which you'd think art is supposed to tackle. I really think most independent cinema has crippled itself with realism.

Adam - thank you for providing me with some amazing reading material for the next couple of weeks . . . and you make a very good point on the nature of plays vs. film . . . it's a shame, especially when you look at the few films like Pi that proved to be something that independent filmmakers might just be capable of doing justice to, if only they were bold enough to take on the challenge/go outside of their safety box of pure artsiness and dabble in the sciences

haha as for the paper, if you're serious, I mean, I have the first draft of it (before adding additional quantum mechanics research), I have no idea where the final paper is though . . . haha if you really want to see it I'd be happy to post it or PM it to you, though I warn you that I was a science major, not a humanities major, for a reason :-p

EDIT: Adam, your new avatar is inspiringly post-modern . . . in an emo sort of way

I can't believe how little I post in this forum...I'm destined for a English MA for heaven's sakes.

This is from one of my all time favorite books, Wuthering Heights. I think it's just the epitome of obsessive passion:

"May you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul!"

The book is full of such speeches, which is why it is one of my guilty favorites.

And then there is this line, from the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Battle of Maldon" which is the epitome of the warrior ethic of the time:

Awww, shucks. See, I think I rarely post in book forums because I spend so much time dissecting them that I can't summon the energy to do it on my off time.

But I get really excited discussing literature, especially with people like you guys, because it's clear we all share a passion for it...

There are way too many good quotes in this thread from top notch books, I didn't want to post because mine was such a bodice ripper in comparison.

That line does match the Wolverine signature! Actually, that's why I like it so much--it's so cinematic. There's alot of variations of it, but that one is my favorite and I think the most accurate to the Old English.

"Gregor Samsa woke one morning from unsettling dreams to find he had been transformed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes."

-Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

I'm not sure why I like it so much, but it's a killer (no pun intended) opening paragraph

C.S. Lewis wrote:Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Sometimes you dream strange dreams, impossible and unnatural; you wake up and remember them clearly, and are surprised at a strange fact: you remember first of all that reason did not abandon you during the whole course of your dream; you even remember that you acted extremely cleverly and logically for that whole long, long time when you were surrounded by murderers, when they were being clever with you, concealed their intentions, treated you in a friendly way, though they already had their weapons ready and were only waiting for some sort of sign; you remember how cleverly you finally deceived them, hid from them; then you realize that they know your whole deception by heart and merely do not show you that they know where you are hiding; but you are clever and deceive them again—all that you remember clearly. But why at the same time could your reason be reconciled with such obvious absurdities and impossibilities, with which, among other things, your dream was filled? Before your eyes, one of your murderers turned into a woman, and from a woman into a clever, nasty little dwarf—and all that you allowed at once, as an accomplished fact, almost without the least perplexity, and precisely at the moment when, on the other hand, your reason was strained to the utmost, displaying extraordinary force, cleverness, keenness, logic? Why, also, on awakening from your dream and entering fully into reality, do you feel almost every time, and occasionally with an extraordinary force of impressions, that along with the dream you are leaving behind something you have failed to fathom? You smile at the absurdity of your dream and feel at the same time that the tissue of those absurdities contains some thought, but a thought that is real, something that belongs to your true life, something that exists and has always existed in your heart; it is as if your dream has told you something new, prophetic, awaited; your impression is strong, it is joyful or tormenting, but what it is and what has been told you—all that you can neither comprehend nor recall.